Jesus

by Leonard Sweet

  “The hallmark of Christian theology is that it is Christology; a theology that can affirm nothing of God except in and through Jesus Christ. . . . From that it is clear that all the knowledge of God which resides in the Old Testament scriptures is mediated through Jesus Christ. Consequently, the theological exposition of these writings within the Church can be nothing other than Christology.

  “The two main words of the Christian confession ’Jesus is the Christ’—the personal name ’Jesus’ and the vocational name ’Christ’—correspond to the two parts of the Holy Scriptures: the New and the Old Testament. The Old Testament tells us what the Christ is; the New, who he is.

  “The Christian Church stands and falls with the recognition of the unity of the two Testaments. A ’Church’ which disparages the value of the Old Testament in face of the New disbelieves the decisive element in the apostolic teaching, and ceases to be ’Christian.’”26

  Brevard Childs (1923–2007)

  “One of the earliest crises of the Church came in the middle of the 2nd century when it became increasingly evident that the scriptures of the Old Testament, even when read as the Law of Christ, were not adequate or complete without being supplemented by a written evangelical witness, that is by a New Testament.

  “What finally emerged was a Christian Bible consisting of both an Old Testament and a New Testament both witnessing to Jesus Christ, the one testifying in terms of prophecy, the other of fulfillment, yet both speaking of the future eschatological rule of God. The Christian Bible was formed from two different collections, each having its discrete traditional history, yet together comprising the one unified testimony to God in Jesus Christ . . . the Old and New Testaments together comprise the Christian Bible. The voice of Israel and the voice of the evangelists constitute a single narrative of God’s redemptive actions spanning prophecy and fulfillment. The two testaments are neither to be fused, nor separated.”27

  Richard Longenecker (20th–21st century)

  “There is little indication in the New Testament that the authors themselves were conscious of varieties of exegetical genre or of following particular modes of interpretation . . . . What the New Testament writers are conscious of, however, is interpreting the Old Testament (1) from a Christocentric perspective, (2) in conformity with a Christian tradition, and (3) along Christological lines.”28

  R.T. France (1938–2012)

  “The idea of fulfillment inherent in New Testament typology derives not from a belief that the events so understood were explicitly predicted, but from the conviction that in the coming and work of Jesus the principles of God’s working, already imperfectly embodied in the Old Testament, were more perfectly re-embodied, and thus brought to completion. In that sense, the Old Testament history pointed to Jesus. For the Old Testament prophets the antitypes were future; for the New Testament writers they have already come. . . .

  “Jesus’ types are drawn from a wide range of aspects of Israel seen in the Old Testament; they are not restricted to any one period or single class. Thus he uses persons in the Old Testament as types of himself (David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jonah) . . . he refers to Old Testament institutions as types of himself and his work (the priesthood and the covenant); he finds the hopes of Israel fulfilled in himself and his disciples and sees his disciples as assuming the status of Israel; in Israel’s deliverance by God he sees a type of the gathering of men into his church. . . . In all these aspects of the Old Testament people of God Jesus sees foreshadowings of himself and his work.”29

  John Goldingay (1942–)

  “The Old Testament is Act I to the New Testament’s Act II. And, as in any story, you understand the final scene aright only in the light of the ones that preceded it. For this reason, a Christian is interested in understanding the whole Old Testament story, in order that he can see as fully as possible its implications for understanding Christ. The converse is also true. As well as understanding Christ in the light of the Old Testament story, Matthew understands the Old Testament story in the light of the Christ event. Matthew’s claim is that the story from Abraham to David and from the exile on into the post-exilic period comes to its climax with the coming of Christ, and needs to be understood in the light of this denouement. Now this is not the only way to read the history of Israel. A non-Christian Jew will understand it very differently. Whether you read Israel’s story in this way will depend on what you make of Jesus. If you believe he is the Christ, then you will believe that he is the climax of Old Testament history. If you do not, you won’t.”30

  N. T. Wright (1948–)

  “The Old Testament must be seen as part of the Christian scripture. I respect those who call the Old Testament the Hebrew scriptures to acknowledge that they are still the scriptures of a living faith community different from Christianity. But Luke insists that since Jesus really was raised from the dead, the ancient scriptures of Israel must be read as a story that reaches its climax in Jesus and will then produce its proper fruit not only in Israel but also in Jesus’ followers and, through them, in all the world.”

  “When Luke says that Jesus interpreted to them all the things about Himself, throughout the Bible, he doesn’t mean that Jesus collected a few, or even a half dozen, isolated texts, verses chosen at random. He means that the whole story, from Genesis to Chronicles (the last book of the Hebrew Bible; the prophets came earlier), pointed forwards to a fulfillment which could only be found when God’s anointed took Israel’s suffering, and hence the world’s suffering, to himself, died under its weight, and rose again as the beginning of God’s new creation, God’s new people. This is what had to happen; and now it just had.”

  “God has, as it were, written the story of Messiah into larger history as the story of ’the Messiah’s people according to the flesh’ (Rom. 9:5). The only way Paul knows how to understand what has happened to Israel is the pattern of Jesus the Messiah, the one in whom all God’s secret wisdom is now revealed.”31

  James D. G. Dunn (1939–)

  “The first thing to be said is that the choice of the OT text as a rule was not arbitrary. The NT writers did not simply seize on any text, or create texts ex nihilo. There was a givenenss in the passages they quote. They are for the most part passages which had already been accepted as messianic (Ps. 110:1), or which in light of Jesus’ actual life have a prima facie claim to be messianic (like Ps. 22 and Isa. 53). . . . Second, the interpretation was achieved again and again by reading the Old Testament passage or incident quoted in the light of the event of Christ, by viewing it from the standpoint of the new situation brought about by Jesus and of the redemption effected by Jesus.

  “Jesus again stands at the centre—the traditions about him and the Christians’ present relation to him through the Spirit. The OT therefore does not rival Jesus as the foundation of Christian unity, for the first Christians read it only from the perspective of the Jesus revelation.”32

  Donald Bloesch (1928–2010)

  “The christological hermeneutic that I propose is in accord with the deepest insights of both Luther and Calvin. Both Reformers saw Christ as the ground and center of Scripture. Both sought to relate the Old Testament, as well as the New, to the person and work of Christ. Their position, which was basically reaffirmed by Barth and Vischer, was that the hidden Christ is in the Old Testament and the manifest Christ in the New Testament. Luther likened Christ to the ’star and kernel’ of Scripture, describing him as ’the center part of the circle’ about which everything else revolves. On one occasion he compared certain texts to ’hard nuts’ which resisted cracking and confessed that he had to throw these texts against the rock (Christ) so that they would yield their ’delicious kernel.’ . . . Christological exegesis, when applied to the Old Testament, often takes the form of typological exegesis in which the acts of God in Old Testament history as well as the prophecies of his servants are seen to have their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Such an approach was already discernible in the New Testament where, for example, the
manna given to the children of Israel in the wilderness was regarded as a type of the bread of life (John 6:31, 32, 49–50, 58). Typological exegesis differs from allegorical and anagogical exegesis in that it is controlled by the analogy of faith, which views the events and discourses of the Old Testament in indissoluble relation to Jesus Christ, to the mystery of his incarnation and the miracle of his saving work (cf. Acts 26:22; I Peter 1:10–12).”33

  Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) (1927–)

  “The Old and New Testament belong together. This Christological hermeneutic, which sees Jesus Christ as the key to the whole and learns from him how to understand the Bible as a unity, presupposes a prior act of faith.”34

  Norman Geisler (1932–)

  “In the Law we find the foundation for Christ. In History we find the preparation for Christ. In Poetry we find the aspiration for Christ. In the Prophets we find the expectation of Christ. In the Gospels we find the manifestation of Christ. In Acts we find the propagation of Christ. In the Epistles we find the interpretation of Christ. In Revelation we find the consummation in Christ.”35

  John Stott (1921–2011)

  “Jesus is the focus of Scripture. The Bible is not a random collection of religious documents. As Jesus himself said, ’The Scriptures . . . bear witness of me’ (John 5:39, RSV). And Christian scholars have always recognized this. For example, Jerome, the great church father of the fourth and fifth centuries, wrote that ’ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ’ . . . Luther similarly, in his Lectures on Romans, was clear that Christ is the key to Scripture.”36

  J. Todd Billings (20th–21st century)

  “The Son fulfilled such divergent Old Testament passages, because even though ’our ancestors’ did not recognize it in their day, the Son is the Creator who is also the ’heir of all things’ and has been made known in history in Jesus Christ. This means that spiritual readings of the Old Testament should not annihilate the Old Testament narrative. When the risen Jesus opened the minds of his companions on the Emmaus road ’to understand the Scriptures,’ he did not suggest that the ’law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms’ had been displaced; rather, they had been ’fulfilled’ in himself (Luke 24:44–45). In the words of Wheaton College theologian Daniel Treier, reading Scripture in a ’Christ-centered’ way ’makes possible spiritual participation in the realities of which Scripture speaks.’”37

  J. I. Packer (1926–)

  “Biblical theology is the umbrella-name for those disciplines that explore the unity of the Bible, delving into the contents of the books, showing the links between them, and pointing to the ongoing flow of the revelatory and redemptive process that reached its climax in Jesus Christ. Historical exegesis, which explores what the text meant and implied for its original readership, is one of these disciplines. Typology, which looks into the Old Testament patterns of divine action, agency, and instruction that found final fulfillment in Christ, is another . . . The importance of this theme—the Old Testament pointing to Christ—is great, although for half a century Bible teachers, possibly embarrassed by the memory of too-fanciful ventures into typology in the past, have not made much of it. (Its abiding importance, we might say, is commensurate with its current neglect!)”38

  Christopher J. H. Wright (1947–)

  “So, when we look back on the original historical exodus in light of the end of the story in Christ, it is filled with rich significance in view of what it points to.

  “The New Testament presents him to us as the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. And the Messiah ’was’ Israel. That is, the Messiah was Israel representatively and personified. The Messiah was the completion of all that Israel had been put in the world for—i.e., God’s self-revelation and his work of human redemption.

  “Israel was unique because God had a universal goal through them. Jesus embodied that uniqueness and achieved that universal goal. As the Messiah of Israel he could be the saviour of the world. Or as Paul reflected, going further back, by fulfilling God’s purpose in choosing Abraham, Jesus became a second Adam, the head of a new humanity (Rom. 4–5; Gal. 3).

  “Matthew clearly wants his readers to see that Jesus was not only the completion of the Old Testament story at a historical level, as his genealogy portrays, but also that he was in a deeper sense its fulfillment. This gives us another way of looking at the Old Testament in relation to Jesus. Not only does the Old Testament tell the story which Jesus completes, it also declares the promise which Jesus fulfills . . . the more you understand the Old Testament, the closer you will come to the heart of Jesus.”39

  Edmund Clowney (1917–2005)

  “The Bible is the greatest storybook, not just because it is full of wonderful stories but because it tells one great story, the story of Jesus.

  “Both the tablets of the law and the tabernacle were given by God at Sinai. Both point to Christ, who is the fulfillment of the law to all who believe and who is the heavenly Priest, the Lamb of God, and true Tabernacle.”40

  Albert Mohler (1959–)

  “You cannot read the law without reading me [ Jesus]. You cannot read the history without reading me. You cannot read the psalms without reading me. You cannot read the prophets without reading me. These are they that testify of me. . . . I’ve actually heard some preachers state as a matter of principle that they preach from the New Testament because it is the Christian book. . . . How they are robbing their people of the knowledge of Christ from the scriptures. How impoverished is that preaching. How undernourished are those congregations. . . . And we also should look to the Old Testament and find a constant, continual, cumulative, consistent testimony of Christ. . . . We do not look back to the Old Testament merely to find the background of Christ and his ministry, nor merely for reference and anticipation of Christ. We are to look to the Old Testament and find Christ. Not here and there, [but] everywhere. . . . Let’s admit it, a good many evangelical preachers and Bible teachers simply have no idea what to do with the Old Testament. . . . To many Christians, to many pastors, to many preachers, and to all too many Christians, the Old Testament is a foreign book.”41

  Jon Zens (1945–)

  “The heart-throb of the N.T. reveals the O.T. is ’the book of Christ.’ Jesus Himself ’explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures’ (Luke 24:27, 44). A veil remains over one’s eyes if he reads the O.T. apart from Christ (2 Cor. 3:14–15). Our ethical use of the O.T. must be done in light of the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1). The O.T. must always be ’interpreted’ from the perspective of the new age and new humanity created in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 10:11; 1 Pet. 1:12).”42

  D. A. Carson (1946–)

  “The point is that however much the Old Testament points to Jesus, much of this prophecy is in veiled terms—in types and shadows and structures of thought. The sacrificial system prepares the way for the supreme sacrifice; the office of high priest anticipates the supreme intermediary between God and sinful human beings, the man Christ Jesus, the passover displays God’s wrath and provides a picture of the ultimate passover lamb whose blood averts that wrath; the announcement of a new covenant (Jer. 31) and a new priesthood (Ps. 110) pronounce obsolescence in principle of the old covenant and priesthood.”43

  Eugene Peterson (1932–)

  “Luther said that we should read the entire Bible in terms of what drives toward Christ. Everything has to be interpreted through Christ.”44

  John Piper (1946–)

  “The glory of Jesus Christ shines more clearly when we see him in his proper relation to the Old Testament. He has a magnificent relation to all that was written. It is not surprising that this is the case, because he is called the Word of God incarnate (John 1:14). Would not the Word of God incarnate be the sum and consummation of the Word of God written? Consider these summary statements and the texts that support them. All the Scriptures bear witness to Christ. Moses wrote about Christ. John 5:39, 46 . . . All the Scriptures are about Jesus Christ, even where there is no ex
plicit prediction. That is, there is a fullness of implication in all Scriptures that points to Christ and is satisfied only when he has come and done his work. ’The meaning of all the Scriptures is unlocked by the death and resurrection of Jesus.’”45

  Tim Keller (1950–)

  “There are two ways to read the Bible. The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you: what you have to do in order to be right with God, in which case you’ll never have a sure and certain hope, because you’ll always know you’re not quite living up. You’ll never be sure about that future. Or you can read it as all about Jesus. Every single thing is not about what you must do in order to make yourself right with God, but what he has done to make you absolutely right with God. And Jesus Christ is saying, ’Unless you can read the Bible right, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you’ll never have a sure and certain hope. But once you understand it’s all about me, Jesus Christ, then you can know that you have peace. You can know that you have this future guaranteed, and you can face anything.’”46

  Graeme Goldsworthy (20th century)

  “The hermeneutical question about the whole Bible correlates with the question, ’What do you think of Christ?’ . . . The hermeneutical center of the Bible is therefore Jesus in his being and in his saving acts—the Jesus of the gospel. . . . We can say that, while not all Scripture is the gospel, all Scripture is related to the gospel that is its centre. . . . The Bible makes a very radical idea inescapable: not only is the gospel the interpretive norm for the whole Bible, but there is an important sense in which Jesus Christ is the mediator of the meaning of everything that exists. In other words, the gospel is the hermeneutical norm for the whole of reality.”47